After the Germans stormed into Building No. 4, they rushed directly up the stairs in the hall because they were eager to seize the entire building, ignoring the stairs in a remote location. The maintenance man took the sergeant and the others towards this remote staircase. Perhaps it was because the road they took was so remote that they didn't encounter many German soldiers along the way. Even if one or two occasionally appeared, they were killed by the sergeant and his soldiers.
Seeing that they were near the stairs, the sergeant lowered his voice and asked the maintenance worker: "Are the people guarding this stairs yours or the Germans?"
"I don't know!" The maintenance man shook his head and replied: "My combat post is outside the gate. I don't know if there has been a battle here."
Fortunately, the sergeant was a veteran with rich combat experience. After seeing the stairs not far away, he secretly breathed a sigh of relief and then said to the maintenance worker: "It seems that we are lucky, there has been no fighting here. "
Seeing that the sergeant was so sure, the maintenance worker asked in confusion: "Comrade Sergeant, how do you know?"
"Look," the sergeant pointed towards the location of the stairs: "Although a hole was blown through the wall next to the stairs, the masonry and rubble were piled on the stairs. They should have been bombed during German shelling or bombing. It collapsed. In addition, no bodies were seen on the stairs, so I boldly speculate that no battle took place here."
"It makes sense, it makes sense!" The maintenance man nodded and agreed: "Listening to what you said, I also think that our own people should be guarding the stairs."
As soon as he finished speaking, something with white smoke fell from the sky and landed on the stairs. The sergeant had sharp eyes and quickly shouted: "Grenade, get down!" After shouting, he pushed the maintenance worker next to him to the ground.
There was a loud "boom", and the air wave of the explosion lifted up the rubble on the stairs, scattering it in all directions, and a lot of the rubble hit the sergeant and the others who were lying on the ground. The sergeant and the others were doing better. Wearing thick cotton military uniforms and steel helmets, they could not feel any pain when the gravel hit their bodies and heads. But the maintenance man suffered a lot. When he lay on the ground, although he held his head with his hands, he still screamed miserably after being hit by gravel.
"Comrade Sergeant," a soldier following the Sergeant asked the Sergeant in a low voice as he got up from the ground: "Are there Germans on the stairs?"
"Probably not the Germans." The sergeant waved his hand and said, "Didn't you see the grenade that just fell on the stairs? That is the standard grenade used by our army. This kind of grenade is not only cumbersome for the Germans to use , and it’s not very powerful, so they don’t bother to use it.”
The maintenance man rubbed the back of his head, which was sore from the rubble, and stood up and asked the sergeant: "Comrade Sergeant, do you think there might be one of our people upstairs?"
"This possibility is very high." Even though the sergeant was giving his subordinates a thorough analysis, he was really not sure whether the people guarding the stairs above were Germans or one of his own, so he could only say vaguely. Said: "But we still have to find a way to confirm."
"Leave this matter to me." After the maintenance man said that, he walked straight towards the stairs. He came to the side of the stairs, raised his head and shouted at the top: "Hey, who is up there? Don't throw grenades blindly. We almost blew up one of our own people.”
After a moment of silence, a voice came from upstairs: "Who is downstairs?"
"I'm Yefim!" The maintenance man heard that the voice above was very familiar, so he took a few steps up the stairs and asked excitedly: "Are you Leshat?"
"It's me, it's me." The person above asked again: "Aren't you guarding the gate? What are you doing here?"
Perhaps to prevent misunderstandings, the pipe repairman who called himself Yefim did not tell Lechat upstairs that he had been captured by the Germans. He turned his head and glanced at the sergeant standing not far behind him, then raised his head and said upwards: "I am taking several comrades from the Guards Division and want to go up here to fight the Germans."
"Come up quickly." Leshat said to Yefim upstairs: "Two Germans just appeared nearby, which scared me. Fortunately, there were gunshots and explosions from the main staircase, and they came again. Turn around and go back.”
When the sergeant and others followed Yefim to the second floor, they saw an old man with gray hair in casual clothes standing at the stairs of the second floor. He was holding a Mosin-Nagant rifle without a bayonet in his waist. There were two grenades stuck in his belt.
The sergeant smiled at him and said, "Old man, it's a good thing you didn't throw a grenade when we were going up the stairs, otherwise none of us would have made it to the second floor alive."
The old man named Lechat grinned after listening to the sergeant's words and replied: "I'm sorry, comrade sergeant, I heard someone talking downstairs and thought it was a German, so I threw one Grenade down."
The sergeant looked around and found that this was just a staircase connecting the first and second floors, and could not lead to the third floor. He couldn't help but frowned and asked: "Why, can't this staircase go to the third floor?" ?”
"Isn't that true, Comrade Sergeant." Leschat replied: "It is precisely because this staircase can only lead to the second floor. People who are not familiar with the terrain in the building really can't find it. Therefore, when deploying the defense, the superiors I am the only one assigned to guard here." He stretched out his hand and pointed to the long corridor next to him, "Follow this corridor, you will find the main staircase leading to the third floor."
After the sergeant thanked Rechat, he took the two soldiers and prepared to rush along the corridor to the main staircase to participate in the ongoing battle there. After he walked a certain distance, he saw Yefim following him closely, so he stopped and said to him: "Comrade Yefim, you don't have to go. You and Leshat will stay at the top of the stairs." , just don’t let the Germans escape from here.”
…………
The German army, which had just occupied the third floor and was not yet stable, saw the Soviet army launching an attack from downstairs and immediately launched a counterattack. They thought that the troops that had just rushed in must have similar combat effectiveness to the troops that they defeated. Therefore, they did not rely on the condescending terrain to defend. Instead, they rushed down the stairs and tried to drive away the Soviet troops with a counterattack. Exit the building.
But they soon paid the price for their underestimation of the enemy. Some soldiers who rushed down the stairs were killed on the stairs by dense bullets. Seeing that the situation was not good, the soldiers at the back quickly retreated, hiding at the top of the stairs and shooting and dropping bombs below.
Lieutenant Zheliya, commander of the fifth company who was personally directing the battle in the building, saw several soldiers trying to rush up the stairs, but they were knocked down by bullets fired from upstairs or blown up by grenades. He quickly organized fire cover and used intensive firepower to prevent the enemies upstairs from taking the lead, while the attacking soldiers took advantage of this time to rush upward.
There was only one company of German troops attacking Building 4, and the platoon deployed outside the building had already been wiped out by the soldiers of Company 5. As for the troops in the building, after a fierce battle with the militiamen in the building, there were only fifty or sixty people left, and they were distributed on the second and third floors. How could they stop the Soviet troops who were several times their size. In less than ten minutes, as the commanders and fighters of the fifth company rushed to the third floor, the gunfire in the building became sparse.
When Zheliya went up to the third floor with a submachine gun, a platoon leader came over and reported to him: "Comrade company commander, our platoon has captured several prisoners, including two wounded. How should we deal with them?"
"Leave no one alive, shoot them all!" Zhelia had already learned from Zalitzman that the female telegraph operator Komarkova was brutally murdered by the enemy, so she hated the Germans deeply. In response to the platoon leader's request, he gritted his teeth and said: "We will never accept the surrender of these two-legged beasts."
"Yes, Comrade Company Commander!" Before attacking Building No. 4, Zheliya made a brief battle mobilization to the soldiers and specifically mentioned that the female radio operator in the building was killed by the Germans. Therefore, all the commanders and soldiers of the Fifth Company His heart was filled with hatred for the Germans. After hearing Zhelia's order, the platoon leader quickly agreed loudly: "I will carry out your order immediately."
Zheliya ordered the communication soldier behind him: "You rush to the deputy battalion commander immediately and tell him that we have eliminated all the German soldiers and recovered the building." After the communication soldier went downstairs, he reached out and grabbed a A soldier who ran in front of him told him, "Go find a militiaman and come over. I want to ask him about the situation in the building."
In less than two minutes, Yefim, who had just come up from the second floor, appeared in front of Zheliya. After raising his hand and saluting a non-standard military salute, he respectfully asked: "Comrade commander, may I ask? What can I do for you?”
"I want to ask," Zheliya asked directly, not caring about the other person's name, "Can you tell me where your switchboard is?"
"Comrade Commander," Yefim, as a frequent visitor to Building 4, certainly knows where the switchboard room is. When he heard that the commander in front of him wanted to go to the computer room, he thought the other party was planning to make a phone call, so he volunteered and said, "I'm very familiar with this place. Let me be your guide."
Yefim took Zheliya to the door of the computer room. When he saw the open door and several corpses on the ground, he couldn't help but be stunned for a moment, and then shouted loudly into the room: "Komarkova, you Where?"
Hearing Yefim calling Komarkova, Zheliya couldn't help but be startled, and then asked tentatively: "Comrade militia, do you know Komarkova?"
"Yes," Yefim nodded vigorously and replied, "She is my girlfriend, and she works in the computer room."
"Comrade," after understanding the relationship between Yefim and Komarkova, Zheliya raised her hand and grabbed one of his arms and said in a heavy tone: "I want to tell you some bad news. Your daughter My friend Komarkova has been brutally murdered by the Germans.”
"Impossible, how is this possible." Hearing what Zheliya said, Yefim showed a shocked expression on his face: "Comrade commander, you are talking nonsense, you don't even know where the main engine room is, how come Maybe you know that Komarkova was killed by the enemy? False, everything you said is false, you must be lying to me."
"If you don't believe it, you can go in and see for yourself." Zheliya let go of his hand, lowered his head and said to Yefim: "The other female operators in the switchboard room moved away before the enemy rushed to the third floor. Only Komarkova was on duty alone. As a result, she was killed by the German soldiers who rushed in."
Yefim didn't believe what Zheliya said, so he rushed into the switchboard room quickly. After looking around for a moment, he saw a female operator wearing a white shirt lying in a pool of blood. From her figure, he recognized her girlfriend Komarkova at a glance. But he still walked over with a sense of luck, helped Komarkova sit up with one hand, shook her vigorously, and shouted loudly: "Komarkova, what's wrong with you? Wake up quickly, I am Yefim, I am Yefim!”
Zheliya walked behind Yefim, looked down at Komarkova who was covered in blood, and found that there were at least seven or eight bullet holes in her body. The blood had long since drained away. Even if there were the most skilled military doctors here, There was nothing he could do to save her life. He knelt down next to Yefim, raised his hand and patted the other party's shoulder, and said in a low voice: "Comrade Yefim, Komarkova has been sacrificed. Please accept my condolences."
"No, she is not dead." Yefim turned to look at Zheliya and shouted with tears in his eyes: "Comrade commander, she is not dead yet. I beg you, please find your health worker quickly. Maybe We can still save her.”
"Comrade Yefim," seeing Yefim grieving and falling into madness, Zheliya stood up suddenly, looked down at him, and said in a stern tone: "Let me tell you the truth, morning She was killed by the enemy before we attacked Building 4. We even used this incident to boost morale and fill the hearts of every soldier with hatred for the enemy. Otherwise, how could we rush into the building so quickly? , and destroyed all the enemies?"
Zheliya's roar made Yefim more or less sober. He raised his head and stared at Zheliya for a while, then asked with difficulty: "Comrade commander, do you know what her last words were?"
"She said, she said," Zheliya's nose suddenly felt sore while reciting Komarkova's last words. Fortunately, he controlled his emotions in time, and tears did not burst out of his eyes, but he still continued to say a few words. "She said" before saying what she wanted to express: "She said: Farewell, dear comrades, save it for me! She may have more to say, but the damn German didn't wait for her to say it. After that, beat her to death."
"Comrade Lieutenant, have you found Komarkova? Have you found Komarkova?" The voice of deputy director Zalitzman came from the door. After he rushed in from the outside, he saw Ye Ye Komarkova, who was held in Fim's arms, immediately fell silent. He just moved his steps mechanically, came to Yefim's side and squatted down.
